Doctors are behaving badly. Two researchers investigated the postings of patients’ details on the popular Doctors.net.uk anaesthetic forum. Of all 84 threads describing a clinical incident posted in 2011, they could identify the hospital involved in 38 cases after searching for the poster’s name and job title on Google. Five case descriptions included the hospital, date, age, sex, and further identifying features of the patient. Twenty five consultants and 33 junior doctors were guilty of breaching patient confidentiality (Anaesthesia 2012, doi:10.1111/anae.12032).

Pulsed electromagnetic fields (PEMF) to stimulate bone growth is a recommended alternative to surgical treatment for non-united scaphoid fractures, but has not been tested for acute non-displaced fractures. Researchers investigated the effect of PEMF in a double blind, placebo controlled multicentre trial of 53 patients with unilateral, non-displaced, acute scaphoid fractures. Clinical outcomes were assessed at 4, 6, 9, 12, 24, and 52 weeks. Neither time to bone union nor functional outcome …